Chapter Ninety-Five: The Hero Battles the Dragon

When the dragon raised its head and roared, Lanser suddenly accelerated, then used the ice spikes beside him as a springboard and charged straight for the beast’s foreclaw, the one that had Lis in its grip.

“Meteor Strike!”

Lanser very much wanted to complain about the name, but whatever the case, the skill at least came with a stat bonus. For example, right now—

A ripple of color flashed across the dragon’s foreclaw, and the beast, still roaring toward the sky, let out a sudden, shrill scream.

After shielding Lis and retreating to where they had just been, Lanser asked, “What is up with this thing? No way it’s a monster that should be on this floor.” He glanced at the dragon, which had already recovered and was now staring at them, then asked Lis beside him.

“But, but its name really is the field boss on this mountain, and our target this time too.” Lis looked at the dragon for a moment. Seeing the name displayed to the right, she answered Lanser.

“Seriously, that makes no sense. It’s level seventy-two. Unless the strategy group is handling the raid, I’d really like to know how the guy ahead of us got the ore the monster drops when it dies.” The dragon was already about to attack again, but Lanser still could not help grumbling.

With Kirito’s strength, he had the confidence to challenge it. And now both he and Kirito were stronger than their original selves; there was no reason they should be unable to win. And what was with that ridiculous level? Was it really not some monster that had flown down from a higher floor? Lanser decided that once this was over, he would go complain to Kayaba Akihiko.

“Roar!”

With a thunderous bellow, dragon flame blasted toward Lanser. Too late to think about anything else, Lanser shoved Lis hard, sending her behind a boulder, while he himself used the recoil to evade the attack.

“Damn it, this dragon can breathe fire too?”

Lanser truly had no energy left to complain. Where were the swords and sorcery? Wasn’t this supposed to be a world without magic? Was this dragon flame some kind of physical attack? He very much wanted to open private chat right now and curse Kayaba Akihiko out, but in order not to die and have the dragon shift its hatred onto Lis, he could only bring this cheating dragon down first.

“Damn dragon!”

Rolling, he appeared directly beneath the beast, and then drove a vicious slash into the unarmored belly.

“I’m the man who even took down a Tigrex in Monster Hunter!”

After letting out that baffling roar, Lanser and the dragon began their strange battle.

One side waved its claws furiously like someone trying to swat a mole, while the other kept rolling in incomprehensible ways, slipping past attack after attack before counterattacking again.

Standing behind the boulder, Lis watched Lanser narrowly evade each assault. Her heart never once settled. From the early, nerve-racking evasions to the later sequence of repeated motions, as if a television broadcast were looping the same scene over and over, Lis suddenly felt that human adaptability was truly astonishing. To see something like this too many times and still recover so quickly, no longer even feeling surprised.

“Come to think of it—” Lanser rolled aside to avoid another attack. “This thing—” He stood after the roll, weapon ready. “Is it an idiot?” He struck upward.

In the middle of the exchange, Lanser thought of something, then looked up at the monster’s health. Under his relentless attacks, the bar had already been whittled down to the last sliver. And yet he still felt something was wrong. If Lianhua had given him this quest, it could not be just to test whether he would make mistakes. Something like that would never happen.

“Roar!”

Just as Lanser’s next hit brought the dragon down to its final sliver of health, something unexpected happened. The enraged dragon let out an angry bellow, flapped its wings, and soared into the air. The light snowfall, previously so light it barely mattered, was whipped upward by the dragon’s wings, sending ice and snow flying through the sky.

“Wait, what? Because I’m using a dagger, you think I’m a thief and can switch into a ranger or something?”

Even though he knew the situation had turned bad, he still could not stop himself from complaining. Anyone who had played Dragon Quest should understand a thief changing into a ranger, right?

While Lanser was thinking about how to handle the situation, the dragon roared again and unleashed another blast of dragon flame directly at him. The only thing he could do was roll away at once. The dragon, as if suddenly enlightened, immediately charged toward the destination of Lanser’s evasive roll.

Bang!

With a deafening crash, the scattered snow blinded everyone at once. No one could see what was happening inside.

But under Lis’s uneasy gaze, Lanser emerged in a sorry state from the cloud of snow.

“Pah, pah! Made me swallow a mouthful of snow.”

After complaining, Lanser focused all his attention on the snow haze. He had already tried it; because the dragon’s attack had been a pounce, its belly was pressed flat against the ground, making it impossible to reach. His weapon attacks could not land effectively either. Earlier, when he attacked the unarmored belly, nearly every strike showed a clear drop in the health bar. But this time there seemed to be no opening at all. Lanser could not help feeling troubled. Since it was a pounce, the dragon’s head was always right in front of him. But a dragon’s head was not a human head that could be solved with a single slash. Though it was still a weak point, countless hard scales protected its vital parts, and the hardest scale on a dragon—the reverse scale—was also located on the head. Even the ordinary scales were—

Lanser’s eyes suddenly flew wide open. He remembered something. The first skill he had obtained—because of one thing and another, after the novice quest ended, Lanser had never paid it much attention again. Now he suddenly thought of it.

The Weapon Master skill was not something like a critical hit in a game, where success depended on luck. According to its description, this meant that while ordinary attacks might not deal effective damage to monsters, double attacks were not so easily ignored. Lanser’s eyes instantly lit up as he stared at the dragon before him. “This thing is a monster over level seventy. If I blow it up, there’s bound to be something good, right?”

That was the only thought in Lanser’s mind at this moment.

Meanwhile, the dragon, having recovered and flown back into the sky, suddenly felt a chill run through its body. After shaking its head hard, it once again let out a roar, determined to crush the little bug that had mocked it just now into a flat pancake.

“Emergency quest—Weapon Master upgrade. The player has discovered the importance of Weapon Master and earned a chance to upgrade the skill. Objective: strike the dragon’s reverse scale one hundred consecutive times. When the reverse scale is shattered, the upgrade will be complete.”

There was no explanation of the skill after the upgrade, but Lanser, having discovered its usefulness, was naturally thrilled. He now had the power to turn the tide. After the next upgrade, there would surely be even more abilities that caught his attention. Without the slightest hesitation, he accepted the quest.

Whether for the materials in the game or for the strengthening of his own abilities, Lanser had no possibility of backing down. Now he stared at the monster’s reverse scale with shining eyes, and the battle was about to begin.

By the way, if you are reading this chapter, it means it is the first day of my vacation. Fireworks all around! I still will not be adding extra chapters, but at least I have eliminated every possibility of delay, so this is still worth celebrating.